Examination of the Concept of Citizenship
The value of citizenship has been recognized as important throughout American history. Writing in his 1898 book, "The Rights and Duties of American citizenship," author Westel Woodbury Willoughby explains that people living under any government may be divided into two classes: citizens and aliens. Willoughby describes a citizen as being someone who owes an obedience to the government while taking advantage of the full-protection of its laws while an alien should only enjoy the rights the state sees fits to grant him.
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The Procedure: Constitutional Convention
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The original procedures for determining the guidelines for United States citizenship were established at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Article 1, section 8 of the United States Constitution charged the United States Congress with the responsibility for making a uniform naturalization law. Congress has propagated this law in Title 8 of the United States Code. Section 1401 of this law states that in order to be considered as a natural-born citizen, among other provisions, a person must have been born in the United States, or outside of the United State if born to a citizen.
Congress has also used Title 8 of the code to establish rules by which non-natural-born citizens can obtain citizenship. For instance, Section 1423 states that prior to earning citizenship a non-natural-born citizen must demonstrate knowledge of the English language. Section 1429 requires perspective citizens to prove that they have entered the country legally. And Section 1439 contains special provisions by which those who serve in the United States armed forces can earn citizenship.
Limitations
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Each person achieving citizenship under the purview of the previously described Section 1401 is considered "natural-born." Natural-born citizenship carries more weight than earned-citizenship. Only natural-born citizens may be elected as either president or vice-president of the United States. The founding fathers used Article 2 of the Constitution to stipulate that in order to qualify for the office of president a person had to be either a natural-born citizen or a citizen at the time that the Constitution was ratified.
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Civil War Era Citizenship; The 14th Amendment
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On June 13 of 1866, shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War, the United States Congress approved a proposed 14th amendment to the Constitution to ensure the citizenship rights of freed slaves who were not guaranteed citizenship prior to that time. Section 1 of the amendment stated that all persons born or naturalized in the United States who were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States were in fact citizens. The amendment was ratified by the states with some controversy. For instance, Tennessee ratified the amendment on July 12, 1866. Following this vote, Congress passed a resolution that re-admitted Tennessee back into the Union. Other former confederate states did not ratify the amendment and were not re-admitted to the union until a later date.
Modern Day Citizenship Controversy
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A conference conducted by several state legislators in January 2011 appeared to open a new modern-day front in the debate over citizenship rights. The legislators took issue with certain citizenship rights obtained through the purview of the 14th amendment. The legislators, under the name State Legislators for Legal Immigration, sought to apply states' rights concepts to assert the right of individual states to bifurcate the recognition of citizenship by their state governments into two separate classes. The legislators propose a system by which children born to non-citizen parents would receive a different type of birth certificate than their peers born to a citizen parent. The legislators argue that the original intent of the "subject to the jurisdiction of" language in the 14th amendment was not to award citizenship status to the offspring of non-citizens born in the United States. The goal of their effort is to restore the application as intended by the original intent.
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References
- United States Archives.gov; Constitution of the United States
- "The Rights and Duties of American Citizenship"; Westel Woodbury Willoughby; 1898
- "Democracy in the United States: What It Has Done, What It Is Doing, and What It Is Doing"; Ranson Hooker Gillet; 1868
- CNN: Legislators Set Sights on "Anchor Babies"
- United States Code: Nationals and Citizens of United States at Birth
- U.S. Constitution.net: Constitutional Topic: Citizenship
Resources
- Photo Credit library isle image by Katya Mikhlin from Fotolia.com
